Slobodan Selenić

Serbian writer and dramatist (Pakrac, June 7, 1933 – Belgrade, October 27, 1995). He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, where he taught dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts from 1965. In the studies Engagement in the Dramatic Form (1965) and Dramatic Directions of the 20th Century (1971), he dealt with issues of the relationship between tradition and innovation in the redefinition of the dramatic script in the works of A. Artaud, B. Brecht, S. Craig, J.-P. Sartre, T. S. Eliot, A. Jarry, L. Pirandello, J. Cocteau, M. Krleža, J. Genet and S. Beckett. In his novels, he shaped a broadly outlined socio-historical context as a space of inevitable mutual familiarity between two cultures united in an insoluble conflict. On the thematic level, Pera Bogalja's Memoirs (1968) represent the juxtaposition of traditions of urban and rural Serbia after the socialist revolution, and Pismo-glava (1982; written in 1972) the juxtaposition of the ideological matrices of communism and citizenship in the same period, while Premeditated Murder (1993) both of these themes of the complex of fractures through the relationship between Serbia in 1992 and 1944. The space of personal and civilizational identity is regularly constituted by exchange with others, either through cooperation or through violence: Friends (1980) juxtaposes the common cultural heritage of Serbs and Albanians, Fathers and Fathers (1985) of Serbia and England, Timor mortis (1989) of Serbs from Serbia and Serb ancestors. The novel Malajsko ludilo (2000) remained unfinished, in which he presented the events by changing the Serbian and Muslim perspectives. Exceptional linguistic awareness and compositional skill, the functional integration of factography into complex fictional structures, and the sovereign use of narrative assets of the modern novel make Selenić's novelistic oeuvre one of the most significant in Serbian literature of the 20th century. He also wrote plays (Kosančićev venac 7, an adaptation of his own novel Friends; Ruženje naroda in two parts; Knez Pavle) which were published together (Dramas, 2003).